Category: Eastern Front

During World War II the Axis powers tried and failed to defeat the Soviet Union. The Germans called this theatre the “Eastern Front Campaign” or “Russian Front Campaign” but to the Soviet citizens it was the “Great Patriotic War”. The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. Fighting in this theatre was characterised by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life variously due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. Fighting lasted from the Axis invasion of the USSR (22 June 1941) to until the Soviet capture of Berlin (9 May 1945).

I’m interested in operational level wargames for World War II. But my definition of “operational level” has been pretty vague. Something about campaigns and major offensives. So I thought I’d explore operational level war in more detail … and it turns out I was right. It is all about campaigns and major offensives.

I was filing old papers tonight when I found a few photos of a very early game of Crossfire. Real photos, you know, the ones on photographic paper, from a shop. It took a while but I figure the game was Ponyri Station. I thought I’d share because, aside from the fact these are the only photos I have of a game of my favourite scenario from Hit the Dirt, they also show how I started out in Crossfire – using anything I had.

A Crossfire scenario based on a Scenario in the iPad version of Battle Academy 2: Eastern Front. It is 1941 and an isolated KV-2, the “Monster”, is preventing vital supplies reaching the advancing German panzers.

This is the small version of Scenario 2: Threat to the Flanks from “Scenarios for all Ages” (Grant & Asquith, 1996) converted to Crossfire. It follows guidelines for Crossfire Scenarios for all Ages. It is a “small” game because there is only a company defending.

Jamie Wish and Chris Harrod played “Paper Factory” (KB1R), the second game of Krasny Bor, featuring the Blue Division in an epic Crossfire campaign. The Spaniards were defending the Paper Factory, in a loop of the Ishora River, against overwhelming odds. Jamie’s Soviets captured all three objectives and won.

Jamie Wish and Chris Harrod played “Advance from Ian Ishora” (KB1F), the first game of my Krasny Bor Campaign featuring the Blue Division defending against overwhelming odds in an epic Crossfire campaign.

The World War II version of Neil Thomas’s One Hour Wargames is slightly more complicated than the Dark Age version (see 448 AD Battle Report). So Chris Harrod and I gave it a go. We played two games in an evening. I’m not a fan, of the WW2 variant and OHW in general. I tried. I really tried. We played four games in total, but I think I’ll give up on OHW now.

Jamie Wish and I had a play test of Crossfire Missions v2. Mac’s automatically generated Crossfire Missions provided another great game of Crossfire. In what turned out to be a fighting withdrawal, I managed to blunt the attack of Jamie’s Germans and withdraw the majority of my Soviet force.

If anybody wants to try a nice little scenario with a reinforced company a side, you could try refighting this game. I’ve included the orders of battle with victory conditions of each side to enable you to do this.

I’ve been talking to Barrie Lovell about the Eye of the Tiger Crossfire Scenario. Barrie made a few changes to the scenario. Well, a lot of changes. He increased the forces involved and created a table based on satellite imagery of the outskirts of Tuckums, which includes a factory estate and a railway line and station.

I have turned Barrie’s description of his game into a Crossfire Scenario, including a map for a 6’x6′ table, so others can give it a try. I then went further and (1) added some new special rules and (2) provided a set of

I’m very interested in the fighting around Ponyri front on the northern flank of the Battle of Kursk. As it happens Vasiliy Krysov was at Ponyri. He commanded an SU-122 platoon within the 3rd Battery of the 1454th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment within the 13th Army. I fancied some SU-122s anyway, and reading about Krysov was sufficient excuse, so I purchased 3rd battery in 15mm scale.

Chris Harrod, Jamie Wish and I played Crossfiregrad by Doctor Phalanx. Three times in fact. “Cracking” is how Jamie described it. I’d say “Ripping”. We will definitely play this again.

We managed three games in one evening because each game takes only 45-50 minutes with a theoretical hard limit of 60 minutes. The game represents a German company-level attack on Soviet positions. The map is “a very crude attempt to bathtub the whole of Stalingrad” and turns into a table only 3′ x 2′ 3″ given the size of my building sectors.